In today’s Writer’s Market enewsletter, readers talked about how well — or not — they are keeping up with their 2008 goals, and one reader offered up what I think is a pretty good idea. (Click here to see the web version of the enewsletter.) Thank you Dawn Herring for her idea of setting up…
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Yesterday I wrote a sentence. That’s it, just one sentence. It wasn’t beause I didn’t want to write. I was tired — I’m always tired 🙂 — but that wasn’t it, either. It was because I was resisting my next step. I’m at the point in my story where I have to write the big climactic scene,…
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“Sir Newton’s Color Me Hawai’i,” the second book in my line of children’s travel books, has its first mention on a blog. Check it out here. With print publications having limited space and lots of news to fill it, websites and blogs are becoming a great way to promote your books. J.A. Konrath lamanted the…
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A wonky hose ate into my writing time this morning. I had to water the garden before the sun came up too high (want to avoid as much evaporation as possible) and it took longer than it should because the new hose we bought wouldn’t accept the sprinkler. But I had gotten up earlier than…
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Tom Colvin has an interesting post on his Becoming a Writer Seriously blog. Called “Writing For an Audience of One,” the post suggests that instead of trying to write for the masses, to write for “success,” we instead aim to write passionately for an audience of one. Think of that one person who would be…
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Got up a little late this morning, at 7am instead of 6 because my tired brain didn’t even register that the alarm was going off until 6:30. But, despite the late start, I managed to whip out four pages before my husband got up. Some days, the words flow, the story zips along at the tips…
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A friend sent me one of those long emails filled with funny pics and captions of animals doing human things. I thought a few were quite appropriate for us. Enjoy: This is us when we’re seeking inspiration. This is us with writer’s block. This is us with severe writer’s block. This is us after a…
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I’ve been writing my middle-grade novel for about a year and a half, on and off at first. But after attending the SCBWI national conference in Los Angeles last year, I left with a commitment to do better. The difficulty is, when? The days are filled with the work, the evenings with family. The fiance…
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Sometimes your characters won’t leave you alone, and at other times, it’s as though they’ve gone on vacation. Some days, you can sit at your computer (notebook) and whip out 10 pages in a couple hours. Other days, to get 10 words out feels as though you’re trying to drag a house up a very…
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